


The Bunny

by Awesomepie3221



Category: How I Met Your Mother
Genre: Sad, i mean this is sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-27
Updated: 2015-05-27
Packaged: 2018-04-01 13:56:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4022413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Awesomepie3221/pseuds/Awesomepie3221
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes comfort objects just aren't enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Bunny

Every kid had a dad. Dads were a part of everyday life. Kids would throw balls with them, be taken to baseball games with them. Heck, even be teachen lessons by them. Barney was only three when he started figuring out something was wrong for both him and James. Neither had a father. Both had an amazing mother, of course. One who cooked them soup when they came down with the sniffles, one who drove them to their pre-school every day. One who take good care of them.

But she wasn’t a dad.

All Barney had was a stuffed bunny. A bunny he had named Floppers. His mother had told him that his bunny was the last thing his father had gave him. Barney cherished the bunny, took it everywhere he went; to the park, to the grocery store, to the garage sales his mother would drag him and James along to. It got torn up, dirty, and just plain smelly. He never let go of it long enough for his mother to wash it. The one time she took it while he was asleep to wash it was when he was two. He woke up before she was able to give it back to him and he cried, thrashed out, and yelled things he shouldn’t have known about. He was still angry even when Floppers was given back to him, smelling like a patch of daisies. He had thrown it against the wall and said it was ruined and refused to touch it until hours later when he had been tucked into a nap and sobbed because he didn’t have his bunny. The bunny was never washed after that.

Barney lost it when he was four. Only for a few hours, though. His mother had taken him and James to the park, and, as always, he brought Floppers. It was normal for him. He had set the bunny down next to his mom on the park bench and went to slide down the slides, swing on the swings, and climb across the monkey bars with his brother. It was two hours when they finally had to leave and by then Barney’s head was too full of food to remember about his stuffed comfort object. They hopped into the car and drove away and went to McDonalds. They arrived back home an hour later, when, as his mom was unhooking him from his car seat, he realized his bunny wasn’t with him.

“It probably just fell under the seat, sweetie,” his mother tried to calm the wailing toddler down. She checked under the dirt-ridden seat and got panicked when the bunny wasn’t under there. Barney continued to cry loudly.

“It’s at the park!” he yelled between tears. His mother didn’t try to hesitate to go back, she made James go back into his car seat and she was off within a minute. Barney still didn’t stop crying. It was like realizing he didn’t have a father again. It was too much pain for a four-year-old.

The bunny was under the park bench when they got there, covered in wood chips and smelling even worse than when they left. But both Barney and his mother were glad to have the stuffed animal back. The relief they felt was like no other.

Barney started drifting away from the bunny when he was six and went into first grade. He started to get bullied for the stuffed bunny. He was told to be a child who still whined for his mother, so he was forced to leaving it at home. That didn’t stop him from cuddling with it at night and taking it to the park and everywhere else. Floppers was not something he would get rid of because of a few comments made by third graders.

He started getting mad at the bunny when he turned ten. The bunny represented something he didn’t have and would never have. It represented something he wanted so badly. Something that made him turn into a sobbing mess every night. It represented pain. He stopped sleeping with the bunny after that, but he still took it everywhere he went. He could part with it at night, but in the day he was always stable enough to keep it with him.

When he was eleven he couldn’t do that anymore. His mother was starting to notice something wrong with him. He would eat less when the bunny was at the table with him. He wouldn’t smile. He wouldn’t act like a normal, healthy child with Floppers. She wanted to know why. After James was sent to bed, she took Barney and set him down on the couch, playing with his short and bleach blonde hair.

“Honey, why have you seemed more distant to Floppers?” she asked softly.

“I don’t like him anymore.” Barney had refused to talk about anything more than night.

He was thirteen and in seventh grade when he found the bunny tucked into a cluttered container in his closet. He got angry at it, throwing it across the room and hard into the wall that separated his room from James room. He screamed and cursed at it, prompting his mother to run into the room. He turned when she did and growled at her before she enveloped him into a hug and he sobbed into her shoulder. She never asked why. She just simply tucked him into bed once he passed out and took the bunny, placing it into her closet.

It wasn’t until Barney was eighteen and going to college did he find the bunny in her closet. He was looking through it to find anything of his that he wanted to take with him. He didn’t get mad at it this time. He didn’t cry at it. He tucked it into his suitcase and finished packing. A week later he took Floppers and went to the park his mother had taken him to over ten years ago. He placed the torn up bunny on the same bench he had lost it all those years ago. He smiled at the memories of his young self it held, whether pleasant or horrid. The bunny was now for someone else to make new memories.

He never mentioned the bunny to Ted, Marshal, Lily, and not even Robin. He wouldn’t bare face the past that came with it again.


End file.
